Way out of my budget but may be of some interest here, my friend posted this on Facebook. He is a big fan.
It’s with a very heavy heart, I sadly have to report that Koetsu is no more!
Having had a conversation with Koetsu’s longest standing Distributor in the UK, Absolute Sounds, the simplified story is, that the family don’t want the business to continue outwith their hands, and don’t want to risk tarnishing the brands reputation and legacy by selling to an outside entity, which is honorable and admirable, in this day in age, too many originally family owned businesses have drifted from what was originally intended, take Gucci as an example, now a massive corporation with no family members involved, and dare I say long lost their original direction.
So please savour and cherish your Koetsu’s as they are now heirlooms from another era, on a brighter not Absolute Sounds have established an arrangement with a trusted Cartridge repairer/rebuilder who they can send cartridges to for quality work which will be returned with frequency response graphs after thorough testing.
RIP
Koetsu
I did manage to have one, non rude, pleasant coversation with him, many years ago, at one of the London HiFi shows.
All other interactions were per his trademark.
It would have been around 2004/5 when someone I knew was moaning that he had emailed Branko a few times asking a question about something he was selling, but not had a reply.
Eventually he rang him and got the info he wanted.
He asked why he had no reply and Branko told him that he should write a letter next time as in his opinion email was not a suitable medium for business.
I’m not so sure the brand won’t be revived although the family have other considerable business interests so perhaps it’s just more faff than profit? The whole concern for quality seems weak unless dynavector are going belly up? The thing is there are a lot of high end carts out there today that in several cases go beyond the pedestal Koetsu have occupied.
